Image Source: AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana
Two Native American tribes—the Wichita Tribe and the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California—filed a federal lawsuit accusing the U.S. government of misusing tribal trust funds to finance abusive Native American boarding schools. Filed in the Middle District of Pennsylvania, the lawsuit claims the U.S. used money from treaties that forced tribes to cede land, which was supposed to be held in trust for tribal benefit, to fund the schools. These schools, often sites of cultural erasure and severe abuse, were part of a broader policy to assimilate Native children and dispossess tribes.
The lawsuit demands a full accounting of approximately $23.3 billion that was allocated to the boarding school program—how it was invested, spent, and whether any of it remains. It names Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and federal agencies overseeing Native affairs as defendants.
This legal action follows a 2022 Department of the Interior report, which confirmed the U.S. government’s role in cultural and physical abuse at the schools and noted many children died and were buried in unmarked graves. Though President Biden later issued a formal apology, the Trump administration had previously cut funding for projects documenting survivors’ stories.
